Women Who Travel Podcast: Salem, Then and Now

26.10.2023 - 20:23 / cntraveler.com

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Salem, Massachusetts has long lived in our public consciousness as both the site of the infamous witch trials of 1692 and 1693 and as a Halloween tourist destination depicted in myriad pieces of literature, pop culture, and art. But what is it actually like to spend time there? Lale chats with Dr. Helen Berger from the Women’s Studies Center at Brandeis University, whose written multiple books about witch communities in Salem and elsewhere to find out. Plus, we dive into WitchTok content from around the world.

Lale Arikoglu: Hi, I'm Lale Arikoglu, and this is Women Who Travel, with an end of October deep dive into pagan Halloween that has both ancient and contemporary significance.

Last year, we celebrated witches in Mexico, and in Denmark. Today, we're going to visit Salem, Massachusetts. And take a look at the rise of witch communities online. 

Ayla Skinner: So Samhain is coming up. Hamhain is also known as Halloween. It's one of the sabots, it's when the veil is the most thinnest. So we do a lot of spirit work, ancestral work on the night of 31st. So I will probably be doing a lot around that 'cause it is obviously the witches New Year two.

LA: More on that later. First, Dr. Helen Berger from the Women's Studies Center at Brandeis University.

Helen Berger: It's a Druid holiday, it's a Celtic holiday, and it is a celebration of fall. And in fall, there's death. It always involves some form of meditation. Focusing on the turning of the year and the Persephone myth of dying, of nature withdrawing into itself. And it always focuses on the self, on what in you is dying.

LA: You know, kind of that mourning period and that celebration, what does that look like? Because I imagine to most people listening, they probably have it all wrong, how they're picturing it. 

HB: Well, it depends if people meet in groups or they do this as a solitary practice, but if possible it takes place outside.

And if people gather in a group, they'll gather in a circle. And there will be chanting, and there will be a slow dance, because with death we dance slowly, not jubilantly. And there will be a reading around death and rebirth, because there's a notion that each year we're now going into the death cycle, but then spring will return.

LA: Helen's written four books about witch communities and teenage witches. For her research, she's attended seasonal events as an expert.

HB: You walked in, and they asked you to please walk in quietly, so they asked you to be very quiet. And you walked in one after the other, and you walked through a group of people all dressed in black robes with hoods up, and forming